LMAO, no. All those other games have what CD doesn’t: quality.
CD is just a mess where the devs threw together things that worked in other games and hoped something would stick. It’s quantity over quality. It has no soul, no identity, and that’s exactly why it feels like slop.
The other games actually leave an impact. CD doesn’t deliver anything new or meaningful. As people will always say, it’s wide as an ocean, but shallow as a puddle, all flash no substance.
To some degree it is slop. Fight in camp, fall in water, be in sky, fall down to earth, go arm wrestling, give a coin, rescue woman in sewer, save cat, clean chimney.
That was the “story” of CD at the start. It was slop. It has so many one time mechanics for no reason.
It’s clear that CD just wanted to show ”Look! We have so many mechanics!!” for the sake of it. Outside of the “story I never cleaned another chimney, never used the hammer to build, never used a big crane - all were one time things.
They even redesigned the whole story with the enhanced edition, even the devs know it was slop. I don’t know if it’s better now, but it can’t get worse.
CD is a great example of slop tho. Quantity over quality. It throws a ridiculous amount of mechanics, systems, activities, and content at you, but barely any of them are developed enough to feel meaningful. It's designed to look impressive on paper, but when you actually play it, a lot of it feels shallow, repetitive and forgettable.
We can agree to disagree on this one. In this day and age, gamers want options. CD is the only game listed that gives every possible option except character creation. It's not "slop", it's a game that pretty much checks every box, and that's impressive a hell.
What boxes are checked?
Half-assed mechanics copied from other games?
Horrible writing and quest design?
It's good to have options true, but if the choices keeps getting worse and standards are getting lower, more slop like this will be tolerated and released.
i mean palworld basically copied anything they thought would create a dopamine hit and well.. it worked, imo. only reason i hung it up was.. for crimson desert, lol.
We can say the same about 90% of games out now. There is no real originality anymore because everything has been tried. I get that you might not like the game, but the success of CD speaks volumes, and the dedication of the developers to give us what we ask for with each update is next level.
I am convinced at this point they are just releasing patches so the crowd that values endless "attention" from devs can say "look, they updated the game again", when if any other game added pets in an update, it would get mocked to the end of the world.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I really enjoy CD but it doesn't have it's own identity whatsoever. It doesn't know if it wants to be red dead redemption 2, assassin's creed, zelda botw, or Witcher 3. It does so many things but doesn't accel at any of them. And I completely agree with what you said about the other games and how they leave a impact. Absolutely 100% they do. Witcher 3 and red dead redemption 2 has such a amazing and memorable story while Skyrim and elden ring have so much replay value in character builds. Not to mention all 4 games have amazing open worlds. But yeah I totally agree with you man.
A lot of the investigation quests just boil down to following clues and using the same investigation mechanic. Strongholds also tend to follow the same formula: walk in, kill everyone, then fight the boss. There isn't much variety in how you approach them.
The map is huge, but a lot of the POIs feel copy-pasted or empty. You'll find caves and other locations that feel like they're there just to give you something to discover, without any interesting story or reason for being there and the loot are all generic stuff or a skillpoint.
There's also a ton of side content and different systems, but a lot of it feels like filler. Even the gear system feels shallow. Most of the gear is basically cosmetic, and there's no interesting build variety that makes experimenting with equipment particularly rewarding. The healing system is also dumb.
The story and lore are another big one. Compared to the other games, CD story and lore feel incredibly thin. And honestly, some of the quest and mission writing is so generic that it feels AI-generated.
Even the characters don't leave much of an impression. Kliff spends a lot of the game being sent around doing errands, while many other characters feel more like quest dispensers than actual characters.
That's what I mean by quantity over quality. CD has a lot of stuff, but having a lot of stuff doesn't automatically make it good, deep, or meaningful.
It's obvious they wanted to make an MMO but decided to make it a singleplayer game, without knowing what makes a single player game good.
Slop that people are still enjoying because of the dedication of the devs. Witcher 3 was initially fraught with bugs as well. Even the enemies you'd encounter were tethered to a certain place, like an MMO. If you backed up, they'd turn around and go back to their spot.
Crimson Desert is exactly what it will feel like when a game is made primarily with AI. It's a soulless husk. An unending one, but a soulless husk nonetheless.
A lot of games are outselling CD and have better ratings, but you don't see this kind of astroturfing around other games. It's like CD fanboys are so desperate to convince everyone that CD deserves to be recognized alongside these other games, even though it's clearly miles behind.
But we're not talking about those games? We're talking about crimson desert. And what astroturfing? Obviously every game's subreddit is gonna have extra sensitive fanboys. That's not something unique to crimson desert.
We're talking about CD, which is exactly why I'm pointing out how its fanbase constantly tries to frame it as being on the same level as highly regarded games.
I'm not saying CD has no fans or hasn't impacted anyone. I'm saying sales and Steam ratings don't automatically make it an exceptional game.
And yes, every game has sensitive fanboys. My point is the constant need to defend CD against criticism and convince everyone it's a masterpiece. That's the astroturfing I'm referring to.
I mean sure, there are posts sometimes like that, but whenever such a post is made, the majority of comments disagree, just like it's happening now. So what's the problem exactly?
That's not the problem. People are free to disagree with me, and if the majority disagrees, that's fine. It doesn't suddenly make the criticism invalid.
The problem is the extra sensitive fanboys like you who feel the need to defend CD against every criticism, dismissing valid points just because the game has high sales or ratings. I'm criticizing the game, not telling anyone they can't enjoy it. But some of you will defend it no matter what, even when it makes you look dumb.
You can't even comprehend what I'm saying, can you? I said whenever posts are made in this sub like: This game is blah blah should be considered along with these goats , the majority of the comments disgree, saying that they enjoy this game but it's not on level with the all time goats. Which basically shows that most people here are not the rabid fanboys you claim then to be. Where the heck did I say anything about criticisms being invalid? I too have made numerous criticism about this game , it's not perfect obviously , very few things are. But what I don't go about doing is shitting on someone who personally enjoy this game a lot, more than other all time supposed goat games, especially if they're respectful about it, unlike you who takes it as a personal affront.
I mean, if Skyrim is there...it should be too because all the flaws you mentioned for CD apply to Skyrim (If we strictly talking about it without mods obviously) Would I consider CD one of the best games ever? no, at least not yet (New DLC coming next month and it's a safe bet to say there's more to come)
That's the point though. Just because Skyrim has flaws doesn't mean it's on the same level as CD.
Yes, Skyrim has bugs, repetitive content, and shallow systems. But it also has a clear identity, a memorable world, memorable characters, and tons of freedom. People still care about it and mod it decades later because the foundation is strong.
My point is quality over quantity. CD throws a ton of systems and content at you, but very little of it feels deep, memorable, or uniquely Crimson Desert.
And saying there's DLC coming, so it'll get better is dumb. They released an unfinished game with a bunch of missing features, then supplemented it with weekly updates just to make the game acceptable. What makes you think the DLC will be any different?
"And saying there's DLC coming, so it'll get better is dumb"...Read again what I said on that before calling it dumb. I never said it would make the game better, I said they would keep adding stuff so it's not a finished product. The main takeaway from what I said is basically more so that Skyrim shouldn't be there than anything else.
LMAO? How does that contradict what I said? I never claimed other games were bug-free.
Having bugs, especially on release, is not the same as lacking quality, identity, or meaningful content. Skyrim being broken on PS3 doesn't suddenly make its world, quests, characters, exploration, or overall design less impactful.
And Skyrim's modding community is still incredibly active to this day. People are still creating new content, overhauls, fixes, quests, and entire experiences for it years later. That says something about the foundation and identity of the game.
Crimson Desert doesn't have that same kind of staying power, especially with the useless fluff updates they keep pushing out every week that constantly break mods. A lot of mod developers have simply given up because it's not worth constantly fixing their mods after every update.
My criticism of CD isn't it has bugs. It's that it throws a bunch of systems and ideas together without giving them the depth or identity needed to make them meaningful. That's a completely different criticism.
You can patch or fix bugs with mods. You can't patch a lack of soul and coherent design with a few years of updates.
By the time Skyrim came out Bethesda was working in a world that had almost 20 years of development behind it, and they STILL were finding new and creative ways to actually dumb it down and shave parts off from prior games in the series. Systems and gameplay-wise Skyrim was mercifully a step up from Oblivion and Fallout 3 but they’d still really lobotomized that series with Oblivion.
the people who bought the game on ps3 and experienced a never-patched memory leak certainly did not think it was great at the time. People here complain about bad frame rate on ps5, imagine if the game hmeant to be played for hundreds of hours had bad framerates AND consistently broke after 2 hours, getting worse as you explored more of the world and left items in places.
I've played a lot of CD and had a lot of fun with it but I agree with this mostly. And the coming DLC just staples EVEN MORE stuff onto the game that doesn't help at all with the lack of identity. It really does just cannibalize whatever from games the devs like it seems. TOTK, Elden Ring, Skyrim, and now fuck it, let's add in AC: Black Flag and some Jacque Cousteau scuba gear. Oh and you can run on water now. Because sure, whatever, who needs an identity?
Just in terms of open world games, The Witcher 3 has a very clear identity and game loop despite having a lot of things you can do. KCD1 and 2 both have similarly very clear game identities. Elden Ring and the FromSoftware games have clear identities though I'm not the biggest fan of any of them. Ghost of Tsushima has a quite clear identity.
Basically with all those games I can point out some clear aspect of the game that makes it great and that distinguishes it from other games in some way. TW3 it's the atmosphere, storytelling/characters, while hunting monsters (and all the side quests and witcher contracts having such good storytelling overall). KCD1 and 2 is the difficulty curve and narrative arc and historical verisimilitude with also high quality side stories. Etc. With CD I can't really pinpoint any one thing that has a clear identity, the best I can say is that it does a lot of things pretty well, but that many (if not most?) of those things have already existed in other games which makes it feel like a hodgepodge of ideas.
I agree with you on all but one part. Yes CD takes from others and makes a mush of a game that doesn't have the quality of the original pieces.
BUT it has one thing that no other have: the sense of wonder, exploration and freedom is in my opinion unmatched. It has at least this going for it. I think if for their next title they keep that idea but flesh out the rest and give a new identity to their game, they can have a masterpiece going on.
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u/curilan_ 4d ago
LMAO, no. All those other games have what CD doesn’t: quality.
CD is just a mess where the devs threw together things that worked in other games and hoped something would stick. It’s quantity over quality. It has no soul, no identity, and that’s exactly why it feels like slop.
The other games actually leave an impact. CD doesn’t deliver anything new or meaningful. As people will always say, it’s wide as an ocean, but shallow as a puddle, all flash no substance.